Credit Suisse expects another good year for small and mid-caps

2013 should be a good year for small and mid-capitalisation stocks following a strong 2012. That was the view put forth by analysts at Credit Suisse in a research note published on December 20th. Amongst the factors cited by their analysts were the strong historical track record (10% average returns) for these companies during similarly tough GDP periods, the current outlook for global growth, a reduction in earnings risks and support from measures of market sentiment and valuation. As regards the second of those, the Swiss broker pointed out that. "Global growth matters to European SMID: Our economists expect global growth in 2013 to be in line with the 20-year average. This suggests European small caps will likely continue to outperform in 2013 given the strong correlation between global industrial production (IP) and the small/large cap trade."What were the possible hurdles identified? In their opinion the key one was so-called 'fund flows.' However, they were optimistic that flows into this category of actively managed funds would improve. In fact, they pointed out how recent exchange traded fund (ETF) flows had turned positive while "institutional equity weightings by US pension funds and net positioning by hedge funds have also started to improve."Based on the above positive view, their analysts' high-conviction ideas through their SMID Focus List (+56% 2012 year-to-date outperforming the DJSTOXX SMID 200 by more than 3,200 basis points) were the following (additions to the list are highlighted in bold): Almirall, APR Energy, Autogrill, Bodycote, Dialog Semi, Flughafen Zuerich, Microfocus, Moneysupermarket, MTU Aero Engines, OC Oerlikon, Ophir Energy, Polarcus, Rotork, Taylor Wimpey.AB